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Make the Search Box Work (and Resize) for You!

I remember one of the early problems with every version of Firefox (until 3 came out) was the fact that you couldn’t edit how long the search box in the right corner should be. Thankfully, with Firefox 3, now all you have to do is stretch it over to fit your needs. So why would you need any of the older add-ons like Searchbar Autosizer?

Let me tell you there are still plenty of good reasons to give this Firefox search tool a shot. Once installed, it shrinks your search box to the smallest size it can. However, as you type into the search box, it extends itself to the left – so you can see everything you have typed in thus far.

Diving Deeper into the Searchbar Autosizer Options…

You can configure just about every size and resizing option with the add-on, but for those of us who don’t like to get too geeky there are three basic setting to choose from:

Size incrementally, to each letter

Enlarge Search box on first strike

Keep the same width all the time

When you have finished submitting a query, you can also choose to empty the search box (or not), revert to the default search engine (or not), and shrink search box to button if empty (or not). They also promote the fact that their extension should work with any Firefox theme out there. After testing with a few, I couldn’t prove them wrong on that point. If you get stuck, they have a pretty nice FAQ too.